The Arizona sentinel., 1887-08-13
WILLIE'S ELEPHANT.
Its Wonderful Construction and UntImely
 End-A Sad Catastrophe.


 in at the driveway gate boy with rosy cheeks and the proud conscious ness that he has not lived in vain. He had been at school, but somehow he was not coming home as early as might have been, and he had in his heart a little dread of his aunt Nancy; but she only looked pleasant, as if she remem-
 bered boyhood days of her own, and he ate his supper and went out to do his evening work.
 But there was something on his mind. Hitherto he had fed the chick ems most leisurely, but tonight he pro- ceeded with such unseemly haste that they were obliged to swallow each ker- nel whole; and he filled the wood-box in twinkling, and drove the COW so fast that she had no pleasure in iv- ing. Then prudently emitting to ask his aunt Nancy if she would like him to do anything else, he hied him to the cornfeld and selected a small and gorgeous pumpkin and bore it to his den-a structure that he had long before erected in secluded cor ner of the door-yard fence. Then he gathered up his aunt Nancy's clothes pole and long stick that leaned against a plum-tree, and adding them to his store went up into the attic over the wood-shed and possessed himself of two horns that once graced the head of an ox-dead now and forgotten. These, with darning-needle and goodly bunch of twine, and later, in the dark ness, five armfuls of hay, he added to the general fund, and then, going to bed, slept the sleep of the well-satisfed
 At school, this Friday afternoon, the teacher had read aloud to her geogra- phy class little story of a tiger-hunt in India, and had shown them Q picture of a native, standing in state by the side of an elephant arrayed in all the trappings of war. Now this elephant had taken a firm hold of Willie, the boy going home to the farmhouse, and the moment school was dismissed he gathered together four of his school-mates, and taking them off to the beech-tree by the road side, unfolded to them a magnificent plan.
 Tomorrow would be Saturday, he said, and Aunt Nancy was going away, and wouldn't be back till dark, and the boys must come over to his house, and they would make an elephant. Not real flesh-and-blood elephant, he was pleased to explain, but something that should look like one, and that could climb trees. He had been think ing about it ever. since the geography class recited, he said, and he knew just how to do it-all but the head; he conldn't think of any way to make the head.
 The boys accepted the invitation, but they sat so long building in fancy the wondrous beast, that as Willie went up the driveway his shadow lay out long behind him, drawn by the setting sun.
 On Saturday mornings Willie might sleep as long as he liked, but this Sat urday morning he arose betimes, and began to wait for the afternoon. It camel am. told that all things come to him who waits-and Aunt Nancy went away for her visit. Willie, finish ing his last after-dinner task, saw the boys coming in at the gate. He went to meet them, and forthwith the ele- phant was in the midst of being pre- pared.
 They made his body first, laying Will lies two poles parallel and some three feet apart, and resting them at one end on board of the fence and at the oth- CT on a saw-horse. Then they laid across them some shorter sticks, and upon these just hay enough to make him look well fed and respectable, and covered him over with Aunt Nancy's brown blanket, which made for him a worthy and durable skin. Then at the front of him they placed an ox-horn on the end of each pole; but he looked too broad-chested, and they drew those ends of the poles nearer together, compressing his lungs, I fear. Besides the clothes-pole branched out at the end into two prongs, so that one of the horns turned of sidewise, making the poor creature look cross-eyed.
 This part of him was simple, but the head required thought. Willie had spent sleepless hours that forenoon it, and now he drew out into view a phosphate sack. A phosphate sack carries an odious smell, but the boys said they did not mind trife like that, and soon Willie had cut a round hole in the bag and sewed into the hole with his needle and twine a piece of last nights pumpkin. This was an eye, but the boys were shocked at its size, and he made the other one small; and the canvass fringed out as he sewed it and formed graceful eye lashes.
 Then the boys twisted up the lower part of the bag for trunk, and stuffed the upper part with hay for head; and Willie, who was chief tailor to his Royal Highness the elephant, seWed